Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

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When did big-picture optimism become cool again? While not blind to potential problems and glitches, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From the Big Bang to the 21st Century confidently asserts that our networked culture is not only inevitable but essential for our species' survival and eventual migration into space. Author Howard Bloom, believed by many to be R. Buckminster Fuller's intellectual heir, takes the reader on a dizzying tour of the universe, from its original subatomic particle network to the unimaginable data-processing power of intergalactic communication. His writing is smart and snappy, moving with equal poise through depictions of frenzied bacteria passing along information packets in the form of DNA and nomadic African tribespeople putting their heads together to find water for the next year.

The reader is swept up in Bloom's vision of the power of mass minds and, before long, can't help seeing the similarities between ecosystems, street gangs, and the Internet. Were Bloom not so learned and well-respected--more than a third of his book is devoted to notes and references, and luminaries from Lynn Margulis to Richard Metzger have lined up behind him--it would be tempting to dismiss him as a crank. His enthusiasm, the grand scale of his thinking, and his transcendence of traditional academic disciplines can be daunting, but the new outlook yielded to the persistent is simultaneously exciting and humbling. Bloom takes the old-school, sci-fi dystopian vision of group thinking and turns it around--Global Brain predicts that our future's going to be less like the Borg and more like a great party. --Rob Lightner

Book Description

"As someone who has spent forty years in psychology with a long-standing interest in evolution, I'll just assimilate Howard Bloom's accomplishment and my amazement."-DAVID SMILLIE, Visiting Professor of Zoology, Duke University In this extraordinary follow-up to the critically acclaimed The Lucifer Principle, Howard Bloom-one of today's preeminent thinkers-offers us a bold rewrite of the evolutionary saga. He shows how plants and animals (including humans) have evolved together as components of a worldwide learning machine. He describes the network of life on Earth as one that is, in fact, a "complex adaptive system," a global brain in which each of us plays a sometimes conscious, sometimes unknowing role. and he reveals that the World Wide Web is just the latest step in the development of this brain. These are theories as important as they are radical. Informed by twenty years of interdisciplinary research, Bloom takes us on a spellbinding journey back to the big bang to let us see how its fires forged primordial sociality. As he brings us back via surprising routes, we see how our earliest bacterial ancestors built multitrillion-member research and development teams a full 3.5 billion years ago. We watch him unravel the previously unrecognized strands of interconnectedness woven by crowds of trilobites, hunting packs of dinosaurs, feathered flying lizards gathered in flocks, troops of baboons making communal decisions, and adventurous tribes of protohumans spreading across continents but still linked by primitive forms of information networking. We soon find ourselves reconsidering our place in the world. Along the way, Bloom offers us exhilarating insights into the strange tricks of body and mind that have organized a variety of life forms: spiny lobsters, which, during the Paleozoic age, participated in communal marching rituals; and bees, which, during the age of dinosaurs, conducted collective brainwork. This fascinating tour continues on to the sometimes brutal subculture wars that have spurred the growth of human civilization since the Stone Age. Bloom shows us how culture shapes our infant brains, immersing us in a matrix of truth and mass delusion that we think of as reality.
Global Brain is more than just a brilliantly original contribution to the ongoing debate on the inner workings of evolution. It is a "grand vision," says the eminent evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, a work that transforms our very view of who we are and why.

Customer Reviews:

Not worth the money, or the time to read it........2007-01-28

I bought and read this book to keep a commitment to a friend. That's the only reason I didn't trash it after the first couple of chapters.
The author appears to have encountered a great many ideas without ever understanding any one of them. A careful reading will reveal that the author's objective is to massage the egos of the rich and famous in order to keep his (bragged about) access to their company. It will also weary your brain with passionately argued self-serving nonsense.
I suggest you don't bother.

Seeing reality despite Howard's hallucination.......2006-12-18

I am a medical professional who thinks of hallucinations as breaks from reality. I am skimming Howard's book and so far it looks like New Age mysticism. My memory recalls a line from Frank Zappa, " Who('re) you jiving with that cosmic debris".

I felt compelled to give this 1 star because there was no zero. Apparently I have'nt been let into Howard's "reality as a shared hallucination". You see, with a scientific background, I notice a great deal of confabulation in Howard's work.

I am an objectivist (physical reality is what it is whether I believe it or not). I do believe we coevolve within our environment. Interaction is part of the nature of reality and that complexity and emergence are just beginning to be understood.

On the other hand, scientists (we are all to varying degrees keen observers and inductionists) (Klein refers to our thinking as Recognition Primed Decision Making referential to stored memories) theorize about (physical) reality through the scientific use of observation and verification/falsification by experimentation, leading to further hypothesizing and model building and testing by further mathematical calculation (sometimes) and further experimentation. Not to mention the occasional seridipitous discovery. Consider that conceptualization the next time you believe (in defiance of the Laws of physics) that you can sqeeze between those "atoms" that make up a brick wall. I am decidedly not a Husserlian phenomenologist, nor am I a Logical Positivist subjectivist.

So far, I am continuing to read the Global Brain while making margin notes. I see a muddling of definitions ie. the difference between objective reality and subjective perception. Or the confused definition of reality and memory when Howard should be speaking of the remembered present as defined by Edelman in describing consciousness. The map is not the territory as Bateson would say.

There may be valuable information in this book but so far it seems a contrivance of conflated metaphors.

But I suppose Howard Bloom might say I have missed "his" point. To which I might reply "Get real, Howard". Or is it that you will be my guru guide through this reality you call a hallucination.

Prepare for provoking thought.......2006-03-23

I love the way that Howard Bloom thinks, it is always illuminating and never elitist. Reading his books always reminds me of reading something written by Carl Sagan. They both have a playful, quick, and insightful way of looking at the world and they both ask questions that make you think for yourself. Do not take this book as scientific proof of group selection (as nothing is EVER proven) but instead prepare to gain new insights into everything related to how our world works.

Howard's original book The Lucifer principle still stands on my list of things that everyone could read to better themselves.

The Art of War
Lucifer Principle
The Naked Capitalist

This book will most likely be added to this list once I give it another read. One thing I will say, however, is that Mr. Bloom's writing has improved in both it's impact and delivery.

Roger Bishop Jones.......2006-03-14

This book changed the way I think about the world and the people in it. Its one of my "decade books" (the best book I read in a decade) which I first read online at telepolis about ten years ago.

I don't buy the headline thesis (his conception of "global brain") but the wealth of information which he supplies in support of that thesis transformed my perception of life on our planet.
Particularly in relation to the pervasiveness and significance of social behaviour not only in humans and higher mammal's but at all levels of life right down to viruses, and the way this interacts with the evolution of life on earth.

I only have questions .......2006-01-18

I am not sure I get this book very well. Perhaps that is because the very notion of a 'collective mind'or 'global brain' is something I find difficult to understand. I have always believed that individuals have minds(if that is the proper way to say it) and they alone think and plan and coordinate action. It is difficult for me to understand the notion of a 'collective mind' without understanding where its center is- center for self- consciousness and reflection.
With that reservation I begin by citing 'Cyberplay's description of this book.

"Global Brain presents evidence that the shared intelligence of humankind is part of a larger planetary mind, one that combines the learning of microbes, waterfowl, predatory cats, idealists, militants, religionists, and scientists. The book predicts that the great world war of the 21st century will take place between the collective intelligence of humanity and that of a world wide web 96 trillion generations old and billions of years wise-the global internet between microbial societies. Finally, Global Brain anticipates some of the creative paths this planet's team of battlers and borrowers may take during the next one-hundred and fifty years."

Again I am not sure I understand this. Bloom has categories for different kinds of operatives within the global -brain. He places special value on those capable of thinking and acting in ways outside the consensus. But so far as I can understand it he differentiates between the collective brain of the human, and other forms of collective brain, such as that of those he considers our great rivals, bacteria. Does this mean that one part of the overall global brain( Let us say the 'human part') is striving to coopt the whole of reality?

I also wonder if Bloom is talking about some vast cosmic evolutionary process from the Big Bang on, what the ultimate goal of this is? Is it one vast system under one vast self -reflexive consciousness?

I wonder too what connection these vast networks have to do with our own individual lives, and whether in terms of valuation they can ever be equal to them. We love and care for individuals more than we can ever love and care (At least most of us) for the whole system of Brain or Mind or Collective Consciousness.

I too wonder what all this has to do with traditional Western religious conceptions of a Creator God, Who is also Providence leading and ruling all to its ideal end.

This book has the great value of stimulating us to ask ultimate questions, perhaps even provides new formulations in which ultimate questions are asked in ways not asked before.

Biological Vision: A 21st Century Tutorial

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Biological Vision: A 21st Century Tutorial
James T. Fulton
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Book Description

BIOLOGICAL VISION has a dual character. It is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of the operation of the visual system of any animal (including humans) while simultaneously providing a guide to the larger work, PROCESSES IN BIOLOGICAL VISION. The latter work is currently available in draft form on the World Wide Web. The larger work provides a more comprehensive analysis of each subject addressed in BIOLOGICAL VISION. It also provides an extensive list of references in support of it.

BIOLOGICAL VISION contains nine chapters. The first chapter begins with a phylogenic tree of the animal kingdom based on vision. The last ends with a series of figures defining the overall performance of the human visual system. Contrary to superficial statements in the recent literature, it shows that animals have enjoyed color vision for at least the last 500 years, long before the arrival of man. It also shows that biological vision is characteristically tetrachromatic; that is, it involves four separate and distinct spectral detection channels. The work takes a major step forward in showing that the human retina is also tetrachromatic, although the overall performance of the human visual system is partially blocked by the absorption of the lens system. The resulting human visual system is best described as a blocked tetrachromat. Its performance cannot be fully described using the conventional notion of humans as trichromats that dates from Thomas Young in 1802.

Chapter Two addresses the three fundamental forms of eyes found in the animal kingdom. It shows the frequently defined dichotomies within the animal kingdom are inappropriate when discussing vision. The families of Arthropoda, Mollusca and Chordata exhibit unique visual features that justify the use of a trichotometric approach when discussing the phylogeny of vision.

Chapter Three presents the overall architecture and signaling schematics found in animal vision. It defines the previously unrecognized role of the thalamus and other elements of the diencephalon in vision. It shows why the "primary visual cortex" does not play the primary role long envisioned in the literature. The primary role in the vision of the higher chordates is shown to be played by the thalamus. The thalamus is absolutely key to the ability of humans to analyze fine detail and to read. For the first time, the crucial role of the thalamic reticular nucleus in controlling the overall operation of the sensory systems of the organism is described. The chapter also shows the remarkable similarity between the signaling architecture of animal vision and its chief analog, the man-made system of color television. It also defines the multiple signaling modes involved in sensing and responding to the environment. These include the awareness, analytical, alarm and volition modes. The signaling path associated with the crucial analytical mode bypasses the primary visual cortex completely on its way to the cerebral cortex.

Chapter Four focuses on the operation of the neuron in its various forms required to support the overall operation of the neural system. The internal electrolytic operation of the neuron is presented for the first time. This presentation includes the description of its signal amplifying mechanism based on the Activa. The Activa is the electrolytic liquid-crystalline semiconductor equivalent of the man-made transistor. The Activa being a three-terminal device results in a major redefinition of the fundamental morphological and physiological characteristics of the neuron. It is demonstrated that, while the neuron is the fundamental morphological element of the neural system, it is not the fundamental electrophysiological element. Individual sensory and signal projection neurons generally contain multiple electrophysiological elements operating in series.

Chapters Five, Six and Seven focus on the unique characteristics, and close integration, of the photoreceptor cells, their associated retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE) cells and the inter-photoreceptor-matrix (IPM) between the two cell types.

Chapter Five is devoted to describing the unique characteristics and operation of the photoreceptor cell from a multitude of perspectives. Like other sensory cells, it is shown to exhibit a neuro-secretory nature. In common with tactile sensory cells, it secretes a protein substance, opsin, used to produce the disks associated with it. Unlike, the tactile cells, the photoreceptor cells sense energy absorbed by the chromophores of vision rather than the energy due to bending of the individual hairs associated with the cells. The chromophores of vision are shown to originate in the RPE cells rather than, as previously thought, the photoreceptor cells themselves.

Chapter Six reviews the photochemistry of biological vision and shows there are four (not three) chromophores associated with vision. The formation of these four chemical species within the RPE cells, and their delivery via the IPM, is examined in detail.

Chapter Seven explores the morphogenesis of the chordate eye, with its reversed retina. It then explores the physical (cytological) dynamics of the photoreceptor cells. It shows that the so-called cones of vision are in fact immature or nonfunctional photoreceptor cells. This leads to the demonstration that all photoreceptor cells are morphologically rod-shaped and physically identical. They differ only in the type of chromophore used to coat their individual disk stacks.

Chapter Eight addresses a variety of features of the visual system architecture not widely appreciated. A top level schematic of the entire visual system is provided along with a top-level functional diagram. These two diagrams support the computational anatomy employed to simplify the mathematical calculations required in the neural system. It is shown that computational anatomy frees the neural system from the need to perform transcendental arithmetic. Finally, the unique two-dimensional associative correlator employed within the perigeniculate nucleus/pulvinar couple to extract features associated with the imaged scene is presented. This couple is key to the abilities of higher chordates, to interpret fine detail (and in the case of homo sapiens, to read). Higher chordates in this context include nearly all chordate predators, including the predatory birds.

Chapter Nine culminates in a summary of the performance achievable in human vision. The focus is on the five major performance characteristics. First, the transient response of the detection process. Second, the overall spectral performance (luminous efficiency function)of the visual system. Third, the chromatic (color rendition) capabilities of the system. Fourth, the dynamic sensitivity control (adaptation) capability of the system and the associated phenomenon of color constancy. And fifth, the temporal and spatial contrast performance of the system.

For the first time, the complete photoexcitation/de-excitation mechanism and equation of visual sensing are described. It shows the equation, proposed by Hodgkin during the 1960's as part of a piecewise solution, is actually a special case of the general mathematical solution. The special case of the long wavelength spectral channel is also developed. It is shown why the spectral performance of the visual system in the long wavelength region is lost as the scene illumination is reduced. For the first time, a cogent description of the transition from hyperopic, through photopic and mesopic to scotopic vision is presented. This description is compatible with all of the data in the literature going back to the 1930's. Using the schematics presented earlier, the chapter provides a physiologically based Chromaticity Diagram for the first time. This three-dimensional diagram is shown to be conformal over the entire spectral range of the tetrachromatic eye. A two-dimensional simplification of this Chromaticity Diagram is presented that is adequate (with caveats) for most studies in human vision. This diagram leads directly to the definition of a unique color set sought by the vision community for many years. When transformed into the coordinate system of the CIE (1935) Chromaticity Diagram, the non-conformality and general limitations of that presentation are highlighted. The new Diagram also leads to a theoretically precise three-dimensional lightness-chrominance space for the first time. The resulting space uncovers several second-order problems with the similar Munsell Color Space.

Customer Reviews:

Stop trying to fill in the blanks.......2007-07-11

Even if someone decided to believe that evolution cannot explain every single detail about nature, there is no reason to simply fill in the blanks with some kind of god.

A lack of complete knowledge is a reason to keep studying and keep searching for the verifiable answer. To fill in the gaps of our knowledge with "god did it" is senseless and irresponsible logic.

An excellent argument, intelligently presented.......2006-08-21

I was surprised to see this book tagged by someone named "John" (most likely the John Kwok who reviewed the book below) with 'science fiction.' Ironically, avowed atheist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins once stated that "this book [referring to one of his books] should be read as though it is science fiction."

This book is very technically complex with mathematics that went completely over my head. However, the fact remains that evolution does not answer all the questions that neo-Darwinians wished it did. Intelligent design provides that answer. If an arrowhead were found, an archaeologist would study it and classify it as perhaps coming from the Bronze Age. But to then turn around and state that the more highly complex DNA molecule 'just happened' by 'blind, random chance' is a huge leap of faith and seems, by all accounts, unreasonable and illogical.

Intelligent design is not simply going to go away because a few atheists and scientists want it to. A poll revealed that 51% of Americans doubt the validity of evolution. Does this mean that they are all 'stupid' and 'uninformed' as Dawkins once claime? No, it does not. It means that the evidence for evolution has not completely convinced them. Religion may or may not be a factor, since even agnostics put their trust in intelligent design. To dismiss it as being a theological or religious argument ignores this fact and reduces it to a philosophical debate, not an empirical one.

'Tis Philosophical Nonsense, Might as Well be a Text on Klingon Cosmology............2006-08-14

I had once remarked, in a previous Amazon.com review of another book written by William Dembski, how I was amazed by his literary productivity, observing that he had published far more books in a short span of time than either Niles Eldredge or Frank McCourt combined (I am sure that both Eldredge and McCourt would be in complete agreement.). My amazement continues in my latest review of "No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence", since Dembski has had more time writing self-serving defenses of Intelligent Design and his "explanatory filter" than conducting any serious research which could shed some light on this issue. Once more, Dembski uses some intellectually sloppy logic to contend that irreducible complexity cannot be the result of anything other than intelligence, presumably from the hand of an Intelligent Designer (He's unnamed, but for those who wish to understand who the Designer is, then you should realize that this individual is known to millions as Jehovah, Allah, Ahura Mazda, or rather, in plain English, our Christian Lord, GOD.). As another customer reviewer has noted aptly, Dembski has provided a transparently sophisticated statement of William Paley's "Watch maker" argument, which was considered, then refuted, by leading scientists during the 18th and 19th Centuries, many of whom were also members of the Protestant clergy, especially in Great Britain (In other words, "Intelligent Design" is not a bold new scientific theory, but merely, the rebirth of an outmoded, intellectually disingenuous idea which was rejected by prominent scientists hundreds of years ago.).

The arguments presented by Dembski are not only intellectually dishonest, but now, irrelevant, as determined by Republican Federal Judge John Jones in his landmark, historic decision for the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Board of Education trial; Jones concluded that intelligent design is a religious doctrine masquerading as science (It is posted online:

htttp://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/all_legal/2005-12-20_kitzmiller_decision.pdf).

Furthermore, thoughtful, reasonable conservatives like Charles Krauthammer and George Will have written lucid, brilliant columns praising the theory of evolution via natural selection, and condemning intelligent design for being an unscientific, religious doctrine (EDITORIAL NOTE: I greatly appreciate Luther Lucidity's thoughtful comments on Intelligent Design (SEE BELOW), which merely emphasize my point that it is an intellectually dishonest misappropriation of science, and a point that Judge Jones would be in complete agreement.).

There are other, more important - and intellectually sound - books available on the so-called "creation vs. evolution" controversy (Intelligent Design has been judged correctly as the latest flavor of creationism enjoying some popularity amongst fundamentalist Protestant Christians; one notable biologist has referred to it as "reborn creationism".), which I regard as more worthy than any of Dembski's self-serving defenses of Intelligent Design. Philosopher Robert Pennock's "Tower of Babel" is a splendid historical overview and philosophical deconstruction of creationism, including the best written rebuke of "Intelligent Design" which I've come across (He also covers Dembski's "explanatory filter", and demolishes it too from a philosophical perspective.). Philip Kitcher, another philosopher, published "Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism" back in the early 1980s, but his arguments are still quite valid today. My friend Ken Miller's "Finding Darwin's God" has an eloquent critique of Intelligent Design, focusing on Michael Behe's mousetrap model of irreducible complexity which claims to bestow validity on Intelligent Design. Distinguished American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) invertebrate paleobiologist Niles Eldredge offers yet another brilliant critique of Intelligent Design in his book "Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life", the elegant companion volume to the AMNH Darwin exhibition which he curated, soon to embark on a tour taking it to many of North America's and Great Britain's finest science museums. And last, but not least, Eugenie Scott, Executive Director, National Center for Science Education (www.ncseweb.org), has written a fine textbook on this issue, "Evolution vs. Creationism". All of these books are more desirable than Dembski's "No Free Lunch". Otherwise, if you insist on purchasing this book, then perhaps you might choose to acquire instead a splendid text devoted to Klingon cosmology (Neither Klingon cosmology nor "Intelligent Design" can be regarded as scientific, since both depend on faith, not reason, to validate their principles.).

A Mathematical Proof of Intelligent Design.......2006-06-22

No Free Lunch, the sequel to mathematician and philosopher William Dembski's Cambridge University Press book The Design Inference, explores key questions about the origin of specified complexity. Dembski explains that the Darwinian search mechanism of random mutation coupled with natural selection is incapable of generating novel complex, specified information (CSI).

This observation translates into "No Free Lunch" (NFL) theorems, which Dembski explains are inherent constraints upon natural systems. Natural Darwinian mechanisms can shuffle this information around, but only intelligence can generate novel CSI. In other words, when it comes to generating truly novel biological complexity, Darwin can have no free lunch.

Some critics have asserted that he has never applied his model for detecting design to any real biological systems. The latter half of this book debunks this fallacious objection, and provides a detailed calculation of the CSI found in the bacterial flagellum. Dembski assesses the complexity of the flagellum on various levels, including its protein parts and its assembly instructions, finding that the amount of CSI contained in the flagellum vastly outweigh the probabilistic resources available in the history of the universe to construct such a structure, absent intelligent design.

No Free Lunch demonstrates that design theory shows great promise of providing insight in the field of evolutionary computation. If Dembski is right, then the ability of genetic algorithms to solve complex problems is a function of the amount of intelligent design inputted by their programmers.

ignore the naysayers.......2006-03-24

Ignore the one-star reviews. The unifying factor in all of them is an irrational hatred of Christianity, a misrepresentation of both Christian teachings and ID, and a reliance on ad hominem attacks. Really, now, I thought most people got beyond such name-calling by about, oh, the third grade.

Despite the bombast, no one has adequately answered either Behe or Dembski. I think the evolutionists would be embarrassed by now by their reliance on so many just-so stories to support an increasingly implausible theory.

The Evolutionary Outrider: The Impact of the Human Agent on Evolution Essays Honouring Ervin Laszlo (Praeger Studies on the 21st Century)

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The Evolutionary Outrider: The Impact of the Human Agent on Evolution Essays Honouring Ervin Laszlo (Praeger Studies on the 21st Century)

Manufacturer: Praeger Publishers
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0275964086

Book Description

The overriding challenge for our species during the 21st century, many believe, will be that of evolving...or becoming extinct. Can the theory of evolution be expanded into a source of guidance that could help our species save itself? This collection brings together the thinking of scholars in a wide range of fields in social as well as natural science directed to this end. Moving beyond a critique of neo-Darwinism and sociobiology to explore the action implications of new theory--including Loye's reconstruction of the long ignored full vision of Charles Darwin and Laszlo's new QVI "fifth field" theory--essays explore the potential for the impact of self-organizing and self-regulating organism, of the biology of love, and the moral directional thrust of the human, as revealed in new discoveries in the fields of biology, psychology, brain research, sociology, economics, history, cultural evolution, and Darwinian re-evaluation. As such, the collection will be of interest to the educational community, the futurist community, and the more general "global foresight" community of concerned people.

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Life Sciences for the 21st Century

Manufacturer: Wiley-VCH
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 3527305882

Book Description

What are currently the most dynamic areas in the life sciences and where do future challenges lie? In this carefully selected collection of essays, world-class scientists -- all of them winners of the Nobel, Lasker or Wolf prizes -- describe groundbreaking developments in their particular area of expertise. The selection of topics is as diverse and colorful as life itself:
* Will advances in molecular biology allow us to learn all about the cell's internal workings?
* What are the prospects of molecular medicine for the treatment of cancer and other diseases?
* How will agriculture develop in the era of transgenic plants?
* How will life on our planet be transformed as the human population continues to increase?
Founded on hard facts as well as on scientific intuition, each chapter highlights a different aspect of life science and is completely self-contained.
Fascinating reading for anyone with an active interest in the life sciences, as well as being ideal for teaching purposes.

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Excellent!!! only if you are interested in the truth...

Genesis: The Evolution of Biology
Jan Sapp
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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The Philosophy of Biology: An Episodic History (The Evolution of Modern Philosophy)

ASIN: 0195156196

Book Description

Genesis: The Evolution of Biology presents a history of the past two centuries of biology, suitable for use in courses, but of interest more broadly to evolutionary biologists, geneticists, and biomedical scientists, as well as general readers interested in the history of science. The book covers the early evolutionary biologists-Lamarck, Cuvier, Darwin and Wallace through Mayr and the neodarwinian synthesis, in much the same way as other histories of evolution have done, bringing in also the social implications, the struggles with our religious understanding, and the interweaving of genetics into evolutionary theory. What is novel about Sapp's account is a real integration of the cytological tradition, from Schwann, Boveri, and the other early cell biologists and embryologists, and the coverage of symbiosis, microbial evolutionary phylogenies, and the new understanding of the diversification of life coming from comparative analyses of complete microbial genomes. The book is a history of theories about evolution, genes and organisms from Lamarck and Darwin to the present day. This is the first book on the general history of evolutionary biology to include the history of research and theories about symbiosis in evolution, and first to include research on microbial evolution which were excluded from the classical neo-Darwinian synthesis. Bacterial evolution, and symbiosis in evolution are also excluded from virtually every book on the history of biology.

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Excellent!!! only if you are interested in the truth..........2003-11-23

Words can not do justice for this brilliant man, I suggest reading it and allowing yourself to make the own reveiw. I will say this though, anyone invloved in the field of biology should read a copy. Anyone who is not in the field of biology should own a copy!

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Like other fields of science, wildlife conservation is a changing field. Threats facing wild populations of apes and other species, say 20 years ago, are likely not the same ones most pressing today, and even where threats have remained unchanged, more effective means of addressing them may be available now. Conservation scientists have learned from many years of experience, and both theoretical and technological advances today provide conservation tools not available in the past. This volume identifies the primary problems faced in conserving wild populations of gorillas throughout Africa, pinpointing new approaches to solving these problems and outlining the increased role that zoos can play in gorilla conservation. It includes expertise of field scientists in a variety of disciplines to discuss current conservation threats, novel approaches to conservation, and potential solutions. The book, while focused on gorillas, serves as a "conservation handbook" for a variety of species, as well as providing specific information on current conservation issues faced by gorillas in the wild.

Animal Breeding: Technology for the 21st Century (Modern Genetics,)

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Animal Breeding: Technology for the 21st Century (Modern Genetics,)
A. E. Clark
Manufacturer: CRC
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This text part offers a review of the research and developing technologies in the expanding areas of genetics, embryology, and molecular biology from experts in the various fields. It includes sections covering manipulation of the embryo, and the mapping and engineering of the genome, as well as information on nuclear transfer and the development of xenotransplantation. Possibilities for future research and development are also considered.

Animal Cell Technology: Challenges for the 21st Century

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Animal Cell Technology: Challenges for the 21st Century

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Animal cell technology is a growing discipline of cell biology which aims not only to understand structures, functions and behaviors of differentiated animal cells but also to ascertain their abilities to be used in industrial and medical purposes. The goal of animal cell technology includes accomplishments of clonal expansion of differentiated cells with useful ability, optimization of their culture conditions, modulation of their ability to produce medically and pharmaceutically, important proteins, and the application of animal cells to gene therapy and artificial organs. This volume gives the readers a complete review of present state of the art in Japan. The Proceedings will be useful for cell biologists, biochemists, molecular biologists, immunologists, biochemical engineers and other disciplines related to animal cell culture, working in either academic environments or in biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.

Animal Cell Technology: Developments towards the 21st Century

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Animal Cell Technology: Developments towards the 21st Century

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ASIN: 0792337360

Book Description

Animal cell technology is a discipline of growing importance, which aims not merely at understanding structure, function and behaviour of differentiated animal cells, but especially at the development of their abilities useful for clinical application. Topics of interest in this regard include: viral vaccines, pharmaceutical proteins and novel applications such as gene therapy and organ culture.
Undoubtedly, these Proceedings of the joint Meeting of the European Society for Animal Cell Technology and the Japanese Association for Animal Cell Technology (Veldhoven, The Netherlands, September 1994) review the most recent status of the field, and will be most valuable to anyone actively involved in the culture of animal cells and its applications. The contributions to this volume were strictly selected on the basis of quality and novelty of contents.
Kluwer is honoured to be able to add this work to its strongly developing publication programme in cell and tissue culture, which now has its connections to all major Societies in this field worldwide.
Audience: Cell biologists, biochemists, molecular biologists, immunologists, virologists and all other disciplines related to animal cell technology, working in an academic environment, as well as in (biotechnology or pharmaceutical) industry.

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